


Painful Needs

by deerna



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Aftercare, Consensual Violence, Established Relationship, Light BDSM, M/M, Masochism, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 12:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3209825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deerna/pseuds/deerna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames remembers Arthur getting home bloody and tired, euphoric and smiling, with bruises and scraps all over his body. Smelling like piss and sex, semen in his hair and his face, when things got sexual. Knife wounds and bullet holes in his flesh and his clothes when things got out of hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painful Needs

**Author's Note:**

> It's been so long since I wrote Arthur/Eames, it feels like trying to walk on numb feet. I hope I didn't mess up too badly.  
> It's unbetaed, so mistakes are all mine. Feel free to point them out.

Eames is curled on the couch with a sketchbook in his lap, working on a new forgery that has nothing to do with a job, a movie playing on mute on the laptop placed on the coffee table, when he hears someone rapping on his door.  
  
He already know it's Arthur, because Arthur is the only one who knows how much Eames misses the sound of English rain against his windows. He's the only one that kind find Eames when he drops off the face of the Earth. Besides, it's too late for it to be anyone else.  
  
So he stands up, puts away the sketchbook and the laptop, takes his rings and his wristwatch off, and opens the door. And Arthur is there, beautiful and slightly rumpled from the trip, with a drenched coat folded on his arm, damp hair, fleeting eyes and a clenched jaw.  
  
"Hi, Arthur," Eames greets him, a smile curving his lips. "Want to come in?"  
  
Arthur nods jerkily and doesn't even look at him when Eames steps aside to let him in and closes the door behind him. He knows he's being watched, while he drops the coat on the nearest chair, looses the jacket, undoes the buttons on his cuffs to roll up his sleeves, and he looks all the more nervous for it. Eames grins, amiably, and waits.  
  
It doesn't take long. Arthur stands stiffly in the middle of his living room for a grand total of half second, before curling his nervous hand in a fist, and throwing it at his jaw. It hurts like a bitch, because Arthur might look like one of those pencil-pushers that work eight-hours turns sitting at some desk, but he actually has a soldier body under those expensive layers of wool and cotton and silk, and he never learned to pull his punches.  
  
But Eames used to be a boxeur and a fighter when nobody was looking, and he's a brickhouse to Arthur's lean physique, so it doesn't take any effort for him to block his next punch and to bodily throw him on floor. Arthur lands with a grunt, gets back to his feet with a snarl and throws himself at Eames again.  
  
Eames is intimately familiar with Arthur's style, after half a lifetime spent by his side beating up goons and projections; he's quick and dirty, completely shameless, full of elbows and faints, cold and observant and deadly precise, conscious of his speed, conscious of his flaws. He knows that in a fair fight, he would be perfectly capable of handing him his own ass.  
  
But this is not a fair fight; sometimes, Eames thinks, that man at the door is not even Arthur. He fights like a wounded animal, scared and pained, crazy with fear and rage and fury and confusion, and he won't stop lashing out, sloppy and predictable, progressively losing focus, until he's completely spent, until Eames made him black and blue.  
  
That night Arthur unravels quick. Eames manages to split his lip in the first ten minutes, and ten minutes later Arthur's aim starts failing. He's a mess: his mouth is bloody, a bruise is starting to darken on his cheek. He's sweaty and exhausted, feverish and shaking, and Eames knows from the way he's holding himself that he has bruised ribs.  
  
He takes pity on him and trips him, sending him on the carpet, and then drops on him and puts him in a hammerlock. Arthur tries wriggling out, but Eames just puts a little more force behind the hold, and he stops.  
  
"Tap out, Arthur," Eames tells him, pushing Arthur's arm until he feels him tense with pain. It used to make him crazy, hurting him that way, but he got used to it, and Arthur always promised that if it was too much he would have safeworded out. It happened only once in the past, when Eames got creative and put him in a bicep slicer hold; Arthur freaked out so much that Eames had to put the hold on the list of their hard limits.  
  
"No," Arthur spits between gritted teeth.  
  
"Tap out," he repeats, without loosing up. It must hurt like hell, but Arthur always yelled at him when he didn't trust him with his own pain threshold.  
  
For a long moment, everything is quiet and still, save from the rain still hitting against the windows.  
  
Then Arthur twists in Eames' hold. A sickening snap.  
  
Eames freezes and instantly lets him go, startled and horrified. Arthur sits up on the carpet, laughing, manic and loud. He doesn't try to hit him again; the fight is over.  
"I won," Arthur says, but he's laughing and crying at the same time, cradling the broken wrist against his chest like a precious gift, and Eames never saw him so high and scared at the same time.  
  
"Fuck," Eames mutters under his breath. Quickly getting on his feet, he goes to grab icepacks and his first aid kit and comes back to kneel next to his injured partner. "Arthur, darling, look at me please. Look at me."  
  
Arthur looks up, and he's smiling through the tears. "It feels good," he says, completely out of it.  
  
"No darling, it's not good. You broke bone. That's against the rules. I'm gonna have to punish you, remember?" Eames says, trying to keep his voice firm and authoritative.  
He researched this. He needed to bring him down as quickly as possible, and to give him first care. Keep him warm. Talk him through the accident. "Are you cold? I'm going to put this blanket on you, all right? Can you show me your wrist, love?"  
  
Gentle is clearly the wrong approach. Arthur frowns. "You're babying me again. You don't need to do that."  
  
Eames snaps. "You broke your wrist to get out of a hold, Arthur. I need to do whatever I need to do, and what I need is to get a bloody splint and some ice on that wrist before it gets worse. Mmmh?"  
  
Arthur has the good grace of looking guilty, as Eames drapes the blanket over his shoulders. He finally holds out his wrist.  
  
The joint is already swelling, and it looks inflamed. Luckily, it's not the first time that Eames had to wrap a broken wrist, so Eames manages to do a quick work of it. He's probably going to need a cast, but they will have to wait. Going to a public hospital is too risky, given their job.  
  
"Fuck," Arthur murmurs some time later, while Eames is applying sticking tape to the icepack so it will stay in place.  
  
"Fuck is an understatement, I'm afraid," he says, putting the supplies back in the kit. "Are you hungry? Do you feel dizzy?"  
  
"Sore," Arthur answers, dismissively, but Eames still opens one of the wrapped granola bar. Arthur rolls his eyes and starts eating it. "And I have a broken wrist. Fuck."  
  
"Do you even remember what happened?"  
  
"I do. I'm. I don't know if I can say what the hell was going on, I'm sorry."  
  
"It's fine. I mean, it's not fine, I'm supposed to punish you. And we're supposed to talk about it."  
  
A long silence stretches between them.  
  
"Arthur, are you sure that this is working out?" Eames asks, quietly.  
  
Arthur shrugs, and tries to stand up, and he looks annoyed when Eames tugs him down back to the carpet. Then he sighs.  
  
"I don't know. I should ask you, since it was you who insisted so much for this… arrangement."  
  
"If you think that after this I'm going to let you back to your filthy bar fights, you're sorely wrong, my dear."  
  
Eames shudders. Remembers Arthur getting home bloody and tired, euphoric and smiling, with bruises and scraps all over his body. Smelling like piss and sex, semen in his hair and his face, when things got sexual; knife wounds and bullet holes in his flesh and in his clothes when things got out of hand.  
  
He remembers them fighting, shouting about it. Arthur telling him to mind his own business. Eames replying that he cared enough about him that he considered him his business. They never said love, love felt too much like a life ago, but they knew the feelings that were there, so they tried to work it out.  
  
They had done research. Traditional didn't work with Arthur; he got into barfights because he needed the pain, but he also needed the fire, the fury. He had to be beaten and bloody and roughed up. It didn't need to be sexual, but sometimes they got to that, too, Eames holding him down, pulling his hair and fucking him from behind, calling him names he wouldn't repeat in the light of day.  
  
He didn't enjoy it in the slightest. He knew that Arthur needed it though, and he didn't mind playing along. It was his job, playing roles. He could do this for the man that he loved. He could do it if it meant that Arthur was safe.  
  
"I do feel better though," Arthur murmurs, stretching his long legs on the carpet. "Calmer. More focused."  
  
"Well, that's good, at least. Was I better than your burly, sloppy and filthy drunkards?"  
  
Arthur chuckles. "You know that I like it better when it's you. You're prettier to look at."  
  
"So that's why your aim went to shit so fast. You were distracted," Eames teases him, putting an arm around him and gathering him closer so that he could lean his head on his shoulder.  
  
"I was distracted because the last job was a wreck. I hate working with Anthea," Arthur breathes out against his neck.  
  
Eames lets him rant about layers and dreamscapes and traps and extractions for a while, carding his finger through Arthur's hair in a calming gesture, nodding and chuckling in all the right places, until Arthur got it all out.  
  
"I think I'm going to ban you from taking any job for at least a month," Eames says, after a while. Arthur whines. "That's your punishment. You've been going too long, you need some rest. So your wrist can heal properly."  
  
"Fair enough."  
  
"And I want you to promise that you won't do it again. I'm serious Arthur, you scared me."  
  
Arthur burrows deeper into his neck, clenching his hands around Eames' shirt.  
  
"I'm sorry, Eames," he says, quietly, sincere. Eames knows that his need of being hurt used to scare him, Arthur had confessed once that it was one of the reasons he went around looking for trouble. If it felt like he couldn't get out of a fight, he felt less shameful about the way pain felt so good. "I guess I was after the sensation and I didn't think of consequences."  
  
Eames hums, thoughtful. "We're probably going to need to talk about options. But not tonight. You need rest, and tomorrow we're going to see Michael so you can get a cast."  
  
He feels Arthur pull away, to look at him. Eames cannot help but find him beautiful, even with a swollen lip and a nasty bruise purpling on his cheek, so tired and smiling and trusting. "Thank you," Arthur says.  
  
"You're welcome," Eames answers, and he kisses him.  


**Author's Note:**

> Read inedit snippets on [my writing tumblr](http://somewhatclear.tumblr.com) or come to say hi on [my main](http://deerna.tumblr.com)!


End file.
